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Wednesday, 27 August 2014

For once, I
don’t mean the jeopardy within a Psychological Thriller – I mean ----> décor…

According to eBay, ‘Shabby Chic’ items top the style charts.The term, coined in the 1980s by World Of Interiors magazine, is a catch-all
for comfortable, cosy, worn, lived-in-but-loved, interior design.Domestic items are deliberately chosen to show signs of age and wear and tear or 'distressed' to achieve the appearance of an antique. At the same time - it's soft and opulent.

DecoratingRoom.net

So
- it’s not just about chipped mugs, peeling paintwork and faded curtains – (think
Withnail and I – this is NOT the look.)

Photo: WithNail and I - The Kitchen - Handmade Films UK

Items are
often heavily painted, with the top coat rubbed or sanded away to show the
wood or base coats. It can be summed up as 'characterful, colourful, used but not
abused' and people seem to like it because it's safe, fashionable and has
an ancestral feel.

Personally, I’m
hooked. In researching my latest book (which involves a cottage and therefore requires
perusing lots of Pinterest images of English Country Cottages – honest!), I’ve
fallen in love with this style. I realise, however, that it’s been on my radar for years
without me being fully aware it if. I love it when strands come together like
that and you can find a label for it! My subliminal penchant
for shabby chic stems from the following:

The Pig in the Wall, Southampton

A long-term
interest in National Trust properties.

One of my favourite cafes, The Pig in the Wall in Southampton, is ‘shabby chic’. Enjoy these lovely photos.

The Pig in the Wall, Southampton

Tiles on the floor in the loo at The Pig

I’ve
turned our garden into a ‘cottage garden’.

Our 'cottage' garden

I love walking around country
villages and visiting gifts shops such as Cornflowers in Winchester. I surmise
that Cath Kidston (doing well on high streets, it would appear) is essentially
shabby chic (with more emphasis on the 'chic').

I’d love
more of it around my home – here are my first few paltry items!

I would add that a fondness of this
style does not extend to 'shabby' items of clothing - wearing pre-distressed
jeans and ripped T-shirts with raw seams is not for me...
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Going off at a complete tangent - my brave hubbie did the MND Ice Bucket challenge - you can see his video here!

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AJ Waines is the author of Psychological Thrillers:
The Evil Beneath and Girl on a Train.Both books went to Number One in 'Murder' and 'Psychological Thrillers' in the UK Kindle charts.

Tuesday, 19 August 2014

Amazon have a category in their bookshelves labelled ‘Crime,
Thrillers and Mystery’. It’s a huge area in commercial fiction with no less
than 18 sub-categories, including Police Procedurals, Legal and Psychological. In
the last few years even more 'sub genres' have been emerging under Psychological Thrillers. Until
recently, for example, I’d never heard of the term ‘Suburban Noir’ – but there
is also 'Domestic Noir’ and ‘Chick Noir’ – and I thought it might be worth
taking a look at this 'new black'.

Kyle MacLachlan in Twin Peaks - Lynch/Frost Productions

Suburban Noir – the dark side of suburban living - is close
to home. It is on our doorstep, the neighbourhood - and breeds threat with themes
of secrets, being trapped, being watched/stalked and things not being what they seem - all
seen from behind those twitching net curtains. This sub-genre can be traced
back as far as David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Remember that series on television? With the
quirky FBI Special Agent, Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)? This sub-genre also spawns a number of novels about so-called friendships - that best-friend who isn't as loyal as we'd hoped... There is an immediacy about the terror in this sub-genre - we can all relate to suburban
noir. The setting isn’t some faraway international cold war spy-ring or trek
through the jungles of Brazil. It’s just beyond your washing line.
Up-close-and-personal. Scary...

Domestic Noir brings the threat even closer. Gone Girl by
Gillian Flynn is a good example, where a marriage is the breeding ground for deception
and betrayal. A number of books where marriage is centre-stage have been
released in the last few years. The Family, too, is a cauldron for crime, bringing
with it abductions, incarcerations, issues with infertility, infidelity and missing
children. The home is rife with buried family secrets that come back to haunt us.
This sub-genre plays on the idea that the home is the safest place to be – OR IS IT..? Novels I've enjoyed in this genre are Until You’re Mine, by Samantha Hayes and
Under your Skin (Sabine Durrant) - not forgetting one of my absolute favourites,Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes.

Chick Noir is defined by Lucie Whitehouse, author of Before We Met, as
psychological thrillers which explore the fears and anxieties experienced largely
by women. In my view, they often share the ‘chatty prose style’ of chick-lit, but
with jeopardy and menace added to the mix. Whitehouse says, “They deal in the
dark side of relationships, intimate danger, the idea that you can never really
know your husband or partner or that your home and relationship is threatened.
In these books, danger sleeps next to you. Marriage is catnip for writers of
psychological suspense because it's such a private, intimate relationship.” Before
we Met starts with what looks on the surface like the perfect marriage – until the
husband fails to turn up at the airport… Liane Moriarty's The Husband's Secret also comes into this sub-genre. This concept isn’t necessarily new - there is a
tradition of psychological suspense emerging from the domestic arena involving
the secrets and fears concealed in marriages and relationships in novels by
Patricia Highsmith, Daphne Du Maurier and even Charlotte Bronte.

My current writing is pulling me towards these 'Noir' genres - almost without realising it. My experience in psychotherapy is all about the unspoken horrors lurking behind the bathroom doorand I find myself drawn to it...

So – what’s
next in this set of sub-genres? Do you enjoy them?
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AJ Waines is the author of Psychological Thrillers:
The Evil Beneath and Girl on a Train.Both books went to Number One in 'Murder' and 'Psychological Thrillers' in the UK Kindle charts.

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen.'
- The opening of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.

'The beginning is simple to mark. We were in sunlight under a
turkey oak, partly protected from a strong, gusty wind. I was kneeling on the grass
with a corkscrew in my hand, and Clarissa was passing me the bottle - a 1987
Daumas Gassac. This was the moment, this was the pinprick on the time map: I
was stretching out my hand, and as the cool neck and the black foil touched my
palm, we heard a man's shout. We turned to look across the field and saw the
danger. Next thing, I was running toward it.'

- The opening of Enduring Love, Ian McEwan

Neither of
these novels would be described as ‘crime novels’, but they have the essence
that a crime thriller (or mystery/suspense) needs – a hook to pull the reader
in.

Don’t all books need a punchy opening?

Absolutely. Every book needs to dangle a carrot of intrigue,
something that makes you want to read on. In crime fiction, however, I think
the hook is more likely to contain an obvious mysterious element, jeopardy or a
sense that ‘all is not right’. Suspense is created when questions
are raised, sometimes right at the start, and answers delayed, usually having to do with causality (whodunnit) and temporality (what happens next?).

McEwan’s book is, in fact, a chilling page-turner written in
beautiful prose, with themes of death, obsession, love and psychological
disturbance – so although his publisher classifies him under ‘contemporary
fiction’, this novel ticks other boxes too.

Anne Tyler, who writes deliciously descriptive novels is certainly not a crime writer, however. Her genre is also contemporary fiction, largely with
themes of family relationships and dysfunction. She opens her book, Back when we were grownups opens with:

'Once upon a time, there was a woman who
discovered she had turned into the wrong person.'

This draws us in for certain – we want to know what happened
to this woman - but we know that the book is going to be about a 'life journey',
the twists, turns and mistakes made by a woman in her later years – not (gauging
from the title too), a suspense novel!

How are Mysteries/Suspense novels different?

The first novel by Nicci French, The Memory Game, published
in 1997, opens with the lines:

'I close my eyes. It’s all there, inside my skull. Mist following
the contours of the lawn. A shock of cold stinging in my nostrils. I have to
make a conscious effort if I want to remember what else happened on the day we
found the body; her body. The reek of wet, brown leaves.'

It's a 'classic' opening to a crime novel/psychological thriller, oozing fear, dread, an unpleasant atmosphere
(mist, cold) and a bad memory, brought to life by the involvement of the senses
– and that essential ingredient – a dead body! Delivered in short punchy sentences,
the author conveys anxiety and the promise of revelations about what terrible event took place. Questions arise for the reader immediately. How did the woman die? Who is she?
Does the narrator know who killed her? (the addition of ‘her body’ implies a hint at familiarity). All this within three lines. Powerful!

This opening, from Rubbernecker, by Belinda Bauer, sends
shivers down my spine:

Tuesday, 5 August 2014

I've found it! I've been looking for this for ages - a poem I wrote
(and illustrated!) when I was 14! I won a school competition with it! I knew it was around somewhere. Just thought I'd share it with you for fun...but there's also something intriguing in it. Read on for a point of interest at the end...

The Story of Winter’s
Children

by Alison Waines (aged 14)

Open the doors to a flourish of cool and a flutter of
surprise

The glistening gems of white and blue lie in a froth
disguising the ground.

Seagulls sweep the sky with winter on their wings

As children below dance on the plateau, covered with naked
trees and white.

Crumbs, flaky and pastel soft, float to settle upon the
tree’s open arms

Bony and spindly, that cast a metallic glint sliding across
the snow.

Apparitions lurk among the shadows and dart away at the
sound of crisp footsteps,

The children hooded in duffels dream of Christmas and the
taste of winter.

Tracks follow patterns across the snow

Not a word spoken as the withered glass fingers lay broken,

And others clutch the roof tops, so frail and brittle.

The trees so silent, meditating in cool calm.

As the thrills of winter beautify the country for a biting
second

The willow, a glass fountain where the tears have iced as it
weeps

Still doesn’t break the silence. Peace like a dove that
never stays,

Such a pity it goes so swiftly.

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I can see now, of course, it's just a series of image statements, but interestingly some of these have stayed with me over the years. I discovered the poem after I wrote the first draft for my latest novel, set in a remote cottage in the snow-bound Highlands, but I was surprised to find a couple of these same images cropping up - 40 years later. There's something oddly creepy about that - how the brain manages to follow similar imaginative pathways over a lifetime and makes a writer's style distinctly their own.

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AJ Waines is the author of Psychological Thrillers:
The Evil Beneath and Girl on a Train.Both books went to Number One in 'Murder' and 'Psychological Thrillers' in the UK Kindle charts.